Mashup Weaves Together 57 Famous Classical Pieces by 33 Composers: From Bach to Wagner

in Creativity, Music | August 15th, 2016

Musi­cal mash up artist Grant Woolard has found a per­fect­ly eth­i­cal way to side­step copy­right issues. Sam­ple the great­est hits of long dead clas­si­cal com­posers.

The prag­mat­i­cal­ly titled “Clas­si­cal Music Mashup,” above, weaves 57 melodies by Mozart, Beethoven, Ver­di, and 30 oth­er greats into one six minute com­po­si­tion.

Woolard invites lis­ten­ers to sep­a­rate out the strands, most of which will sound famil­iar, even if you are unable to name that tune.

(One sharp-eared lis­ten­er not only accept­ed the chal­lenge, but post­ed a com­plete list­ing of all the com­posers and com­po­si­tions in chrono­log­i­cal order with time stamps. Those who don’t mind SPOILERS can view it at the end of this post.)

Those who crave an even more inter­ac­tive assign­ment can down­load the sheet music (for a small fee), then recruit two more pianists to per­form the six-hand­ed piece.

You can also buy an audio track of the com­po­si­tion here.

And now, the list of Woolard’s raw ingre­di­ents, com­pli­ments of youtube com­menter, Yifeng Huang:

1. Mozart Eine Kleine Nacht­musik K525 0:01

2. Haydn Sym­pho­ny 94 “Sur­prise” II 0:01

3. Beethoven Sym­pho­ny 9 IV (Ode to Joy) 0:06

4. Mendelssohn Wed­ding March in Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream, sec­ond theme 0:06

5. Dvo­rak Humoresque No.7 0:13

6. Wag­n­er Lohen­gerin, Bridal Cho­rus 0:13

7. Tchaikovsky Piano Con­cer­to 1 0:19

8. Saint-Saens Car­ni­val of Ani­mals: Swan 0:19

9. Bach Well Tem­pered Clavier Book 1 Pre­lude 1 0:19

10. Tchaikovsky 1812 Over­ture 0:29

11. Bach Cel­lo Suite No. 1 0:32

12. Mendelssohn Song with­out Words “Spring” 0:33

13. Schu­bert Ave Maria 0:40

14. Schu­bert Sym­pho­ny 8 “Unfin­ished” 0:46

15. Ver­di “La Don­na è Mobile” in Rigo­let­to 0:51

16. Boc­cheri­ni String Quar­tet in E, Op.11 No.5, III. Min­uet­to 0:55

17. Beethoven für Elise 1:03

18. CPE Bach Solfeg­gi­et­to 1:04

19. Pagani­ni Capric­cio 24 1:11

20. Mozart Piano Sonata No.11 III (Turk­ish March) 1:15

21. Grieg Piano Con­cer­to 1:22

22. Mozart Requiem Lac­rimosa 1:26

23. Schu­bert Ser­e­nade 1:30

24. Chopin Pre­lude in C minor 1:35

25. Strauss II Over­ture from Die Fle­d­er­maus (Bat) 1:46

26. Brahms 5 Lieder Op.49, IV. Wiegen­lied (Lul­la­by) 1:46

27. Satie Gymno­pe­die 1:56

28. Debussy Arabesque 2:00

29. Holst Plan­ets, Jupiter 2:05

30. Schu­bert Trout 2:14

31. Liszt Hun­gar­i­an Rhap­sody No.2 2:28

32. Mozart Vari­a­tion on Twin­kle Twin­kle Lit­tle Star 2:41

33. Schu­mann Op.68, No.10 Mer­ry Peas­ant 2:47

34. Schu­bert Mil­i­tary March in D 2:54

35. Bach* (could be Pet­zold) Min­uet in G 3:00

36. Mozart Piano Sonata No.16 in C, K545 3:07

37. Offen­bach Can-can in “Orpheus in the under­world” 3:08

38. Beethoven Piano Sonata No.8 “Pathe­tique” II 3:18

39. Mozart Die Zauber­flöte Over­ture 3:24

40. Tchaikovsky Romeo and Juli­et Over­ture 3:31

18′. CPE Bach Solfeg­gi­et­to 3:44

41. Beethoven Sym­pho­ny 5 “Fate” 3:47

6′. Wag­n­er Wed­ding March 3:52

42. Rach­mani­noff Pre­lude Op.3 No.2 in C# minor 3:53

18′. CPE Bach Solfeg­gi­et­to 3:56

43. Chopin Piano Sonata No. 2 III. Funer­al March 4:11

44. Williams Impe­r­i­al March in Star War 4:19

45. Tchaikovsky Marche Slave 4:25

46. Smetana Ma Vlast II. Moldau 4:38

47. Tchaikovsky Nut­crack­er — Flower Waltz (not the main theme!) 4:45

48. Borodin Polovt­sian Dances 4:45

49. Strauss II Blue Danube 4:58

50. Vival­di Four Sea­sons I. Spring 5:03

51. Han­del Mes­si­ah, Hal­lelu­jah 5:03

52. Han­del The Entrance of the Queen of She­ba 5:08

53. Elgar Pomp and Cir­cum­stance March­es No. 1 5:15

54. Pachel­bel Canon in D 5:21

55. Mozart Sym­pho­ny No. 35 in D major (Haffn­er) K. 385, IV. Finale, Presto 5:27

56. Chopin Etude Op.25 No.9 in G flat, “But­ter­fly” 5:34

57. Bach Gavotte from French Suite No. 5 in G Major, BWV 816 5:42

 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The World Con­cert Hall: Lis­ten To The Best Live Clas­si­cal Music Con­certs for Free

1200 Years of Women Com­posers: A Free 78-Hour Music Playlist That Takes You From Medieval Times to Now

Debussy’s Clair de lune: The Clas­si­cal Music Visu­al­iza­tion with 21 Mil­lion Views

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her lat­est script, Fawn­book, is avail­able in a dig­i­tal edi­tion from Indie The­ater Now.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Stephen King on the Magic Moment When a Young Writer Reads a Published Book and Says: “This Sucks. I Can Do Better.”

in Books, Creativity, Literature, Writing | July 29th, 2016

Go to a book­store.

Tell the clerk you’re an aspir­ing writer.

You’ll be direct­ed to a shelf—possibly an entire section—brimming with prompts, exer­cis­es, for­mu­lae, and Jedi mind tricks. Round out your pur­chase with a jour­nal, a fan­cy pen, or an inspi­ra­tional quote in book­mark form.

Few of author Stephen King’s books would be at home in this sec­tion, but his 2000 mem­oir, On Writ­ing, a com­bi­na­tion of per­son­al his­to­ry and prac­ti­cal advice, cer­tain­ly is. The writ­ing rules list­ed there­in are numer­ous enough to yield a top 20. He makes no bones about read­ing being a manda­to­ry activ­i­ty:

If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Sim­ple as that.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, giv­en his prodi­gious out­put, he also believes that writ­ers must write dai­ly. Prac­tice helps shape a writer’s voice. Dai­ly prac­tice keeps him or her on inti­mate terms with char­ac­ters and plot.

Got that?

Nose to the grind­stone, young writer! Quit look­ing for fairy god­moth­ers and mak­ing excus­es! Though you might be able to fast track to the mag­i­cal moment King revealed in a 2003 speech at Yale, above.

Go back to the book­store.

Ask the clerk to point you toward the shelves of what­ev­er genre has tra­di­tion­al­ly made your flesh crawl. Chick lit…vam­pire erot­i­ca…man­ly air­plane reads. Select the most odi­ous seem­ing title. Buy it. Read it. And heed the words of King:

There’s a mag­ic moment, a real­ly mag­ic moment if you read enough, it will always come to you if you want to be a writer, when you put down some book and say, This real­ly sucks. I can do bet­ter than this, and this got pub­lished!

(It’s real­ly more of a spon­ta­neous­ly occur­ring rite of pas­sage than mag­ic moment, but who are we to fault Stephen King for giv­ing it a crowd-pleas­ing super­nat­ur­al spin?)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen King’s Top 20 Rules for Writ­ers

Stephen King Cre­ates a List of 96 Books for Aspir­ing Writ­ers to Read

Stephen King Cre­ates a List of 82 Books for Aspir­ing Writ­ers (to Sup­ple­ment an Ear­li­er List of 96 Rec­om­mend Books)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Creativity of Female Graffiti & Street Artists Will Be Celebrated in Street Heroines, a New Documentary

in Art, Creativity, Film, Life | July 11th, 2016

Street art is a fre­quent­ly dan­ger­ous game. The threat of arrest pales in com­par­i­son to some of the haz­ards long time prac­ti­tion­ers describe. While oth­er artists sketch in pleas­ant cafes, cre­ators of large-scale street pieces often have no choice but to wrig­gle through ragged holes in chain link fences and climb to ver­tig­i­nous heights to get to their can­vas­es.

There’s a pop­u­lar con­cep­tion of graf­fi­ti artist as lone wolf, but when it comes to the per­ils of the street, there’s safe­ty in num­bers. You need a crew. Female street artists must draw on the pow­er of sis­ter­hood.

As pho­to­jour­nal­ist Martha Coop­er notes in the trail­er for direc­tor Alexan­dra Hen­ry’s Street Hero­ines, above:

I think bring­ing women togeth­er empow­ers them and there’s been some resis­tance on the part of men…it has to do with cama­raderie too. It’s not that they’re say­ing, “You can’t do it,” but they’re just not allow­ing them in to their inner group.

Appar­ent­ly, street art is some­thing of an old boy’s club.

“What!?” gasps Lady Pink, a well known vet­er­an with over 35 years’ expe­ri­ence. “You need a penis to climb a lad­der? Does it help you hold on?”

The female cama­raderie Coop­er cites extends to the suc­cess­ful fund­ing of a Kick­starter cam­paign to com­plete this doc­u­men­tary on “the courage and cre­ativ­i­ty of female graf­fi­ti & street artists from around the world.” As the dead­line loomed, Lexi Bel­la & Danielle Mas­tri­on, two of the women fea­tured in the doc­u­men­tary, issued an open invi­ta­tion to New York City-based female artists to join them in cre­at­ing a spur-of-the-moment mur­al in Brook­lyn, sur­ren­der­ing artis­tic con­trol to embrace com­mu­ni­ty spir­it.

street heroines2

Many of the 25 artists Hen­ry has pro­filed thus far speak of using their work to bring beau­ty to the street, and to advo­cate on behalf of the oppressed. Such earnest­ness may dimin­ish them even fur­ther in the eyes of the old school He Man Woman Haters Club. Lexi Bel­la coun­ter­bal­ances the laugh­ably soft image cer­tain macho prac­ti­tion­ers may assign to them by speak­ing unapolo­get­i­cal­ly of the thrill of mak­ing one’s work as big as pos­si­ble “so mil­lions of peo­ple can see it.”

Street Hero­ines is aim­ing for release in 2017.

via The Cre­ators Project

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Puts Online 10,000 Works of Street Art from Across the Globe

The Bat­tle for LA’s Murals

The Odd Cou­ple: Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, 1986

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Go Inside the First 30 Minutes of Kubrick’s The Shining with This 360º Virtual Reality Video

in Art, Creativity, Film | June 1st, 2016

Apolo­gies to Stephen King, but when I think of The Shin­ing, I think of Stan­ley Kubrick’s 1980 film. While King has long and vig­or­ous­ly object­ed to Kubrick’s lib­er­ties in adapt­ing the sto­ry, I’d argue it’s one of those oft-lis­ti­cled cas­es where the film is bet­ter than the book. Grant­ed, the hor­ror writer has made sev­er­al jus­ti­fied crit­i­cisms of the film’s misog­y­nis­tic por­tray­al of Shelly Duvall’s char­ac­ter, but he has also con­fessed to a total indif­fer­ence to movies, telling Rolling Stone, “I see [film] as a less­er medi­um than fic­tion, than lit­er­a­ture, and a more ephemer­al medi­um.” In this instance, at least, he’s dead wrong. Movie lovers have been obsess­ing over every blessed detail of Kubrick’s The Shin­ing for 36 years and show no signs of stop­ping.

Part of the rea­son the sto­ry works bet­ter on film than on the page is that The Shin­ing is what one might call an archi­tec­tur­al horror—its mon­ster is a build­ing, the Over­look Hotel, and Kubrick wise­ly exploit­ed the idea to its max­i­mum poten­tial, adding an addi­tion­al struc­ture, the top­i­ary maze, as a fur­ther instan­ti­a­tion of the story’s themes of iso­la­tion, entrap­ment, and exis­ten­tial dead ends. Video game designers—many the same age as the film’s young pro­tag­o­nist Dan­ny when the movie came out—surely paid atten­tion. The long takes of Danny’s explo­ration of the omi­nous, emp­ty moun­tain lodge now, in hind­sight, resem­ble any num­ber of vir­tu­al con­sole and PC worlds in many a first-per­son game.

Now join­ing the archi­tec­tural­ly-obsessed reimag­in­ings of The Shin­ing is “Shin­ing 360,” a project by dig­i­tal artist Claire Hentschk­er. She describes it as:

a 30-minute audio-visu­al exper­i­ment for VR derived from the phys­i­cal space with­in Stan­ley Kubrick’s film ‘The Shin­ing.’ Using pho­togram­me­try, 3D ele­ments are extract­ed and extrud­ed from the orig­i­nal film stills, and the sub­se­quent frag­ments are stitched togeth­er and viewed along the orig­i­nal cam­era path.

In oth­er words, the project allows view­ers to move around, using 360-degree Youtube video, in a dig­i­tal­ly frag­ment­ed space built out of the first 30 min­utes of the film. Be aware that there are brows­er restric­tions, but if you open the video in Chrome, Fire­fox, Inter­net Explor­er, or Opera, you’ll be able to nav­i­gate through the space using your mouse or the WASD keys.

It’s a very weird expe­ri­ence. The Overlook’s inte­ri­or exists in con­tigu­ous 3D pho­to­graph­ic blobs sus­pend­ed in black nothingness—giving one the feel­ing of reach­ing the edge of some pre­vi­ous­ly-believ­able video game world and find­ing out there’s noth­ing beyond it. And it’s made all the creepi­er by the near-exclu­sion of the very few peo­ple the hotel does contain—with the excep­tion of a kind of residue of par­tial bodies—and by a dron­ing, one-note ambi­ent syn­the­siz­er score. This isn’t the first time Hentschk­er has used the film’s spa­tial unique­ness as com­put­er art. In the short stu­dent video above from 2015, she intro­duces a wonky tech­ni­cal pre­cur­sor to “Shin­ing 360” that also the­mat­i­cal­ly address­es the movie’s misog­y­ny: “Map­ping the Female Gaze in Hor­ror Movies.”

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load & Play The Shin­ing Board Game

Stan­ley Kubrick’s The Shin­ing Reimag­ined as Wes Ander­son and David Lynch Movies

Watch a Shot-by-Shot Remake of Kubrick’s The Shin­ing, a 48-Minute Music Video Accom­pa­ny­ing the New Album by Aesop Rock

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Online Knitting Reference Library: Download 300 Knitting Books Published From 1849 to 2012

in Art, Books, Creativity, Design, Internet Archive, Magazines | April 11th, 2016

Mother's Knitter

No need to scram­ble to the fall­out shel­ter, friends.

That mas­sive boom you just heard is mere­ly the sound of thou­sands of crafters’ minds being blown en masse by the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­hamp­ton’s Knit­ting Ref­er­ence Library, an exten­sive resource of books, cat­a­logues, pat­terns, jour­nals and magazines—over sev­en­teen decades worth.

Viva la Hand­made Rev­o­lu­tion!

The basics of the form—knit­ting, purl­ing, increas­ing, decreas­ing, cast­ing on and off—have remained remark­ably con­sis­tent through­out the gen­er­a­tions. No won­der there’s an endur­ing tra­di­tion of learn­ing to knit at grandma’s knee…

What has evolved is the nature of the fin­ished prod­ucts.

Miss Lambert

Miss Lam­bert’s “Baby Quilt in Stripes of Alter­nate Col­ors” from her 1847 Knit­ting Book could still hold its own against any oth­er hand­craft­ed show­er gift, but even the most hard­core mod­ern crafter would find it chal­leng­ing to find tak­ers for her “Car­riage Sock,” which is meant to be worn over the shoe.

Trawlers

Dit­to the “Woolen Hel­mets” in Help­ing the Trawlers, a 32-page pam­phlet pub­lished by the Roy­al Nation­al Mis­sion to Deep Sea Fish­er­men. The hope was that civic-mind­ed knit­ters might be moved to donate hand­made socks, mit­tens, and oth­er items to com­bat the chill faced by poor work­ing men fac­ing the ele­ments on freez­ing decks.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the eager vol­un­teer knit­ting force grav­i­tat­ed toward the pamphlet’s most baroque item, putting the pub­lish­er in a del­i­cate posi­tion:

Owing, per­haps, to their nov­el­ty, a great many friends com­mence work­ing for the Soci­ety by mak­ing these arti­cles and the Uhlan caps, and we are apt, on this account, to get rather more of them than we require for our North Sea work. The Labrador fish­er­men val­ue the hel­mets equal­ly with their North Sea breathren, and thus there is an ample out­put for them, but we shall be glad if friends will bear the hint in mind, and make some of the oth­er things in pref­er­ence to the hel­mets and Uhlan caps.

Woollen Helmets

All of the books in the Knit­ting Ref­er­ence Library are open access, though many of the pat­terns and mag­a­zines are depen­dent on copy­right clear­ance. Give a prowl, and you’ll find that a few of the old­er pat­terns are avail­able as down­load­able, print­able PDFs , such as this hand­some gent’s cable knit pullover or the tricky 50’s bison cardi­gan, below.

Bison Cardigan

Even with­out step-by-step instruc­tions, the pat­tern envelopes’ cov­er images can still pro­vide inspiration…and no small degree of amuse­ment. Some enter­pris­ing librar­i­an should get crack­ing on a sub-col­lec­tion, Fash­ion Crimes Against Male Knitwear Mod­els, 1960–1980:

Knitting Crime 1

Knitting Crime 2

Knitting Crime 3

There’s even some­thing for the lat­ter day Labrador trawler...

Balaclava

The entire col­lec­tion can be viewed here. For view­ing and print­ing pat­terns, we rec­om­mend select­ing “PDF” from the list of down­load options.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The BBC Cre­ates Step-by-Step Instruc­tions for Knit­ting the Icon­ic Dr. Who Scarf: A Doc­u­ment from the Ear­ly 1980s

See Pen­guins Wear­ing Tiny “Pen­guin Books” Sweaters, Knit­ted by the Old­est Man in Aus­tralia

The Whole Earth Cat­a­log Online: Stew­art Brand’s “Bible” of the 60s Gen­er­a­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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An Inside Look at How the Fantastic “Wintergatan Marble Machine” Makes Music with 2000 Marbles & 3000 Handmade Parts

in Creativity, Design, Music, Technology | March 18th, 2016

Swedish musi­cian Mar­tin Molin’s Mar­ble Machine, above, looks like the kind of top heavy, enchant­ed con­trap­tion one might find in a Miyaza­ki movie, gal­lop­ing through the coun­try­side on its skin­ny legs.

Those slen­der stems are but one of the design flaws that both­er its cre­ator, who notes that he hadn’t real­ly tak­en into account the destruc­tive pow­er of 2000 flow­ing mar­bles (or more accu­rate­ly, 11mm steel ball bear­ings).

It’s nat­ur­al for some­one so close to the project to fix­ate on its imper­fec­tions, but I think it’s safe to say that the rest of us will be bedaz­zled by all the giant musi­cal Rube Gold­berg device gets right. Hannes Knutsson’s “mak­ing of” videos below detail some of Molin’s labors, from recre­at­ing the sound of a snare drum with coast­ers, a con­tact mic and a box of bas­mati rice, to cut­ting wood­en gears from a cus­tomiz­able tem­plate that any­one can down­load off the Inter­net.

If it looks like a time con­sum­ing endeav­or, it was. Molin wound up devot­ing 14 months to what he had con­ceived of as a short term project, even­tu­al­ly design­ing and fab­ri­cat­ing 3,000 inter­nal parts.

The fin­ished prod­uct is a feat of dig­i­tal, musi­cal, and phys­i­cal skill. As Molin told Wired,

I grew up mak­ing music on Midi, and every­one makes music on a grid nowa­days, on com­put­ers. Even before dig­i­tal they made fan­tas­tic, pro­gram­ma­ble music instru­ments. In bell tow­ers and church tow­ers that play a melody they always have a pro­gram­ming wheel exact­ly like the one that is on the mar­ble machine.

The “mak­ing of” videos high­light the dif­fer­ence between the record­ed audio sig­nal and the sound in the room where the machine is being oper­at­ed. There’s some­thing immense­ly sat­is­fy­ing about the insect-like click of all those mar­bles work­ing in con­cert as they acti­vate the var­i­ous instru­ments and notes.

The machine also appears to give its inven­tor a rather brisk car­dio work­out.

You can read more about the con­struc­tion of the Mar­ble Machine on Molin’s Win­ter­gatan web­site. Its tune is avail­able for down­load here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See the First “Drum Machine,” the Rhyth­mi­con from 1931, and the Mod­ern Drum Machines That Fol­lowed Decades Lat­er

New Order’s “Blue Mon­day” Played with Obso­lete 1930s Instru­ments

Two Gui­tar Effects That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Rock: The Inven­tion of the Wah-Wah & Fuzz Ped­als

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Free: Download 500+ Rare Music Manuscripts by Mozart, Bach, Chopin & Other Composers from the Morgan Library

in Creativity, Museums, Music, Opera | March 14th, 2016

mozart 1

When my son first start­ed play­ing the piano, I lost sev­er­al evenings chas­ing the holy grail of free online sheet music. Sad­ly, most of what we were inter­est­ed in down­load­ing wasn’t real­ly free… just the first page.

It’s hard to ratio­nal­ize drop­ping five bucks on one song, when the New York Pub­lic Library for the Per­form­ing Arts is a short sub­way ride away. The prob­lem is, I’m not much of a musi­cian, and while there are scores and scores of scores upon their shelves, I rarely under­stood what it was I was check­ing out. Often I’d come home with the sought after piece, only to real­ize that I’d inad­ver­tent­ly checked out a vocal selec­tion, or the chord-rich equiv­a­lent of a cock­tail pianist’s fake book.

With the Mor­gan Library’s Music Man­u­scripts Online project, there’s no guar­an­tee my son or I will be able to play it, but I do know exact­ly what I’m get­ting.

The hand­writ­ten man­u­script of Mozart’s com­ic singspiel, Der Schaus­pieldirek­tor,  above, for instance, auto­graphed by the com­pos­er him­self. 84 pages worth, not count­ing cov­ers and end­pa­pers, all free for the down­load­ing!

Put that on your iPad, Mr. Salieri!

The col­lec­tion cur­rent­ly offers dig­i­tized ver­sions of upwards of 500 musi­cal man­u­scripts, with more to come as the review­ing process con­tin­ues.

It’s search­able by com­pos­er, and big names abound.

bach 2

Per­haps you’d like to warm up the Wurl­tiz­er with Bach’s Toc­ca­ta and Fugue for Organ, BWV 538, in D minor…

puccini

Or let all your opera singing, bal­let danc­ing friends know you’re avail­able to accom­pa­ny them with Puccini’s auto­graphed man­u­script for Le Vil­li…

chopin

Or cir­cum­nav­i­gate the scrib­bled out boo boos, while attempt­ing Chopin’s Polon­ais­es, Piano, Op. 26. Chopin’s John Han­cock is the reward.

The hits just keep com­ing: Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy, Fau­ré, Haydn, Liszt, Mahler, Massenet, Mendelssohn, Schu­bert, Schu­mann…

Mendelssohn

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, female com­posers are gross­ly under­rep­re­sent­ed, but there are a few gems, such as Mendelssohn’s sis­ter Fan­ny Hensel’s auto­graphed man­u­script of the song Sel­mar und Sel­ma, dec­o­rat­ed with a pret­ty pen­cil and wash draw­ing by her hus­band

The Mor­gan has plans to add essays about the man­u­scripts by lead­ing schol­ars. In the mean­time, pick a piece and start prac­tic­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The World Con­cert Hall: Lis­ten To The Best Live Clas­si­cal Music Con­certs for Free

85,000 Clas­si­cal Music Scores (and Free MP3s) on the Web

All of Bach for Free! New Site Will Put Per­for­mances of 1080 Bach Com­po­si­tions Online

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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City of Scars: The Impressive Batman Fan Film Made for $27,000 in 21 Days

in Comics/Cartoons, Creativity, Film | February 26th, 2016

The sys­tem is bro­ken… 

A com­mon enough sen­ti­ment in an elec­tion year, but in this case, the speak­er is Bat­man, and the proof is the 30-minute labor of love above.

Five years ago, father and son Bat­man fans Sean and Aaron Schoenke spent $27,000 to make City of Scars, this thrilling­ly grim entry into the canon.

The Jok­er may have escaped, but the Schoenkes part ways with a cer­tain Hol­ly­wood fran­chise by con­fin­ing the cyn­i­cism to the sto­ry. The prospect of measly box office returns did­n’t stop them! They knew from the get go that their take would be zero. DC Comics allows ordi­nary mor­tals to use its char­ac­ters in their own inde­pen­dent projects, pro­vid­ed they don’t attempt to real­ize a prof­it.

Pre­dictably dis­mal box office fig­ures aside, the Schoenkes’ efforts have paid off splen­did­ly in oth­er ways. City of Scars, and its 2011 sequel, Seeds of Arkham, below, have gar­nered a gen­er­ous help­ing of atten­tion and awards (The Wall Street Jour­nal called City of Scars “impres­sive”), and the tal­ent­ed vol­un­teer cast and crew have ben­e­fit­ed from increased vis­i­bil­i­ty. Rather than reward­ing him­self with a new car or a man­sion in Bel Air, Schoenke the Younger broke with tra­di­tion, and cast him­self as Nightwing.

These days, the Shoenkes’ pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny, Bat in the Sun, has legions of fans, just like Bat­man! Super­hero devo­tees are a noto­ri­ous­ly tough crowd, but Bat in the Sun’s dark psy­cho­log­i­cal vision pass­es muster with them, as does its taste in vil­lains.

Box office totals notwith­stand­ing, the same can­not be said for the stuff the stu­dio churns out. (The sys­tem is bro­ken, remem­ber?)

The Schoenkes have chan­neled their indie suc­cess into a fran­chise of their own, Super Pow­er Beat Down, a month­ly web series where­in view­ers get to decide which super­hero won the staged bat­tle. Watch it below, in prepa­ra­tion for choos­ing the next vic­tor.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Evo­lu­tion of Bat­man in Cin­e­ma: From 1939 to Present

Bat­man & Oth­er Super Friends Sit for 17th Cen­tu­ry Flem­ish Style Por­traits

Russ­ian Super­heroes: Artist Draws Tra­di­tion­al Russ­ian Folk Heroes in a Mod­ern Fan­ta­sy Style

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. You don’t need to cos-play to hang with her at the New York Fem­i­nist Zine­fest this Sun­day. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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